[1] Bāḍiʿ was located south of the Gulf of ʿAḳīḳ, just offshore on the island of Er Rih (al-Rīḥ) in what is now Sudan, near the border with Eritrea.
The merchants of Bāḍiʿ traded combs and perfumes from Arabia for elephant tusk and ostrich egg from Ethiopia.
The city was apparently in ruins by 1170, when the poet Ibn Ḳalāḳis was shipwrecked off the "island of mosquitoes" (jazīrat al-nāmūs) near Dahlak.
[3] H. E. Hebbert suggested, based on his analysis of about forty cisterns, that the inhabitants may have had difficulty keeping their water supply free of mosquitoes, which may have hastened the abandonment of the port.
He discovered houses, streets, potsherds, glass, one hundred cisterns and several tombstones with Arabic inscriptions.
[1][5] Song-dynasty export celadon (porcelain), which is known to have reached Sawākin by the twelfth century, has not been found at Bāḍiʿ, which is consistent with the presumed timing of the city's abandonment.